The Russian government-owned bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) is currently in collaboration with e-procurement platform Roseltorg to come up with a transparent way to handle electronic transactions between businesses and government customers.

The new initiative would also seek to store and verify transactions, and could be in place before the year ends or by early 2018. Russian companies have slowly embraced the advantages of advanced technology, particularly blockchain technology, which comes with plenty of possibilities. For now, the immediate intent is to establish accuracy and better transactions to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) rules.

The new platform aims to enhance the interaction between government agencies and public authorities, enable faster decision taking, and drive a more efficient corporate governance and national government overall.

VEB plans to use this technology to facilitate aspects of its business such as investments, project monitoring, procurement, electronic contracting, e-contract fulfillment and tracing the supply and subcontractor chain.

“The blockchain technology used as corporate governance and national government tool will help to achieve zero human factor impact, so transactions will become accurate, transparent and sound,” said Vnesheconombank Chairman Sergey Gorkov.” It will help to sensibly reduce the service time-frames, boost the operating efficiency and strengthen the people’s trust with respect to public authorities and financial institutions. The system will be useful not only to the government, but also to business customers. The new mechanism will help businesses interact with their clients and suppliers, improve the document exchange quality, enable stronger data confidentiality and underpin the customers’ confidence in the product suppliers.”